Signs of a Toxic Relationship

Is your relationship killing you?

By Sabrina Alexis

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Toxic relationships usually creep in and take hold without warning. The reason they can be so hard to spot is most toxic relationships don’t starts out toxic. Things probably started out great, as most relationships do. The chemistry is strong, you talk for hours, you’re excited about all the possibilities. Slowly and subtly, things may start to change. Maybe you see it, maybe you don’t And when you do, you try to rationalize it away, you tried to hold onto the way things were in the beginning, all that passion, all the potential, you don’t want to admit defeat.

In time you may not even recognize yourself anymore. While you were once a happy, confident, stable person, now you are an insecure, miserable, emotional mess. You feel miserable in your relationship but you stay, thinking you’ll be even more miserable out of the relationship. It eats away at you until you become a shell of your former self. Eventually it ends and you are utterly devastated and broken. It’s not necessarily because you’re sad to see him go, or you miss the relationship, it’s because you sold yourself out and you lost a big piece of yourself. It can take many months, or even years, to mend.

The end of a toxic relationship can almost feel like the worst hangover of your life. You wonder what happened, where did it go wrong, how did you let yourself go this far and why weren’t you able to stop?

Sabrina Alexis is a bestselling author and co-founder and editorial director of A New Mode (anewmode.com), a women’s lifestyle site with a focus on dating and relationships. Join the A New Mode mailing list for daily relationship advice and answers to all your burning questions: anewmode.com/subscribe and follow along on Instagram (@anewmode).